Happy December everyone. Just thought I'd ask what your inspiration was for trying the vegan kickstart, and if you have done it before, what made you continue? If anyone asks you in general ( friends, co-workers, your dad! ) why you decided to take up a vegan diet, what do you tell them? Curious to know =)

My inspiration for eating this way goes back 9 years, when I was diagnosed with osteoporosis. My internist told me to read 'The China Study', get off meat and dairy, and go to the gym and lift heavy weights. And I did! Within a week I no longer had gastric reflux issues, and I reversed the osteoporosis to an low osteopenia number 3 years later. Also, I had been diagnosed with calcification of the aorta, and I cut the saturated fat intake to 8g/day. A few years later the aorta was clean on a heart scan. Now with no oil and judicious use of nuts, seeds and avocado, my saturated fat intake is around 2.5g/day. But the number one inspiration is the way I feel....WONDERFUL. With my excellent nutrition and daily exercise, at 67 I can literally run circles around friends of the same age. I'm the grandmother who goes down the high slide with the kids at SportBounce. Eating WFPB minimally processed no added SOS is now a lifestyle I embrace. It breaks my heart to see my peers going downhill fast because they are unwilling to even try a different way.

My inspiration? I was in Hawaii when my facialist told me of Dr. John McDougall and how she was eating potatoes, rice, beans, veggies and fruits to loose weight.

I was single at the time and exercising daily at the health club. The club provided a $5.00 lunch of all you could eat of Dr. McDougall's diet. It was the most popular place to eat at that time.I never looked better in my entire life and I loved the food.

When I married some years later, I knew I had to attend a program to make sure I knew what we were going to eat and how to prepare it. I had a law degree, not one in nutrition. I went to Pritikin for 2 weeks since it was not far to learn to cook and catch up on the latest health information.

Next, I took my husband with me to attend the Pritikin program for one month. This was the best money we have ever spent. It gave us a model for living our lives well.

I look around and see Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Maria Bartiromo and her dog are vegans. It is a growing trend when intelligent and informed people decide to inform themselves and decode the for profit industrial food system.

I have purchased and read every book by Dr. Barnard. Each one tells us important facts.His serve to us has my gratitude! He is doing a great deal for public health that the government and the food industry cannot do.

I'm a rebel. I found out 3 years ago while promoting Proposition 37 in California to label foods that were genetically modified, our food is killing us slowly.

I don't know whether GMOS are safe or not, it's still being debated, but if Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy because of a small DNA marker that ran in her family it makes me wonder. Our overall health has gotten worse with the introduction of GMOs in the 1990s. I don't know the exact stats, but autism, diabetes, infertility, obesity, heart disease, allergies, digestive problems are all on the rise since then. I wonder if in the future our children will be able to have children at all.

I found out that the nutritional pyramid, now the nutritional plate, was based on promoting the meat and dairy industry, not on nutrition. We know so much more now, yet the old way is still being taught as the best health. The healthy lifestyle information is muddy on purpose.

While I guess in the 1930s it was a good thing to promote meat and dairy, we did raise our feed animals differently than we do it today.

Today, we cause terror in the lives of feed animals by feeding them a diet rich in GMOs that wouldn't support their health and do not allow them any freedom to move around. Then we eat those emotional chemicals. No wonder we have such an angry society.

Feed lots are the number one cause of global warming and pollution, even more than our cars and industry but no one talks about that.

Even the way we grow our plant food is substandard. We depend on chemicals to enrich the soil and to control pests which we then feed to our families. Dabbling in organic farming I know if you protect and naturally enrich the soil you grow healthy plants with very little pest problems. The chemical companies offer nothing to the consumer.

I am a vegan because I know too much. I believe vegans are the new spiritual leaders of our time. We are perceived as different, yet I find us the most loving of all people on the planet with the willingness to sacrifice some convenience for the good of humanity.

I have rheumatoid arthritis, and eating a vegan diet helps me control my symptoms. I still have to take some pretty intense medications, but I'm positive I'd have to take even more if I didn't eat this way. For me, a vegan diet is the only way to eat and still have the quality of life I want to have.